Monday, June 19, 2017

Hoo-boy! Today's post is all about how to grab a direct link so you can do your thing without any muss or fuss.

What's a direct link?

A direct link is a link that goes directly to a page or tweet, NOT your homepage. In other words, when we click this link -- Dates for Bout of Books 20 -- we want it to pull up the tweet about when Bout of Books 20 will take place. We DON'T want to end up on Bout of Books twitter homepage and have to search for the tweet.

Easy, right?

How do I find the url so I can provide a direct link?

There are several different ways to get the information you need. Pick the one that's easiest for you and go to town.

Option 1:

First off, find the status you'd like to link. I'm going to use the Bout of Books tweet I mentioned above as an example.

Next, click on the date for that tweet (or status update).

This will take you to a post that is JUST the tweet you want to link.

Highlight the url in the address bar.

Right click and copy the highlighted text. This is the link you will be adding to the linky. When someone clicks on that link, it will take them directly to the tweet we want them to see.

See? Easy.

Option 2:

As with everything in life, there is more than one way to get the desired result.

This time, we're going to click on the little arrow to the right of the date:

A pop-up screen will appear. Click "Copy link to Tweet":

If the internet gods smile upon you, you'll get a pop-up that looks something like this:

Right click on the blue highlighted area and choose "copy." The url is now happily waiting for you to paste it somewhere. (Hopefully the url section in the linky!)

Option 3:

And finally, you can also get the direct link if you right click on the date and choose "copy link address" (or some variation of that depending on the browser you're using). Like option 2, the url is now waiting for you to paste it into a lucky linky box!

No matter which option you choose, you now have the url to provide a direct link to anyone who needs it.

For blog posts, tumblr posts, etc, you can click on the title of the post in lieu of clicking on the date and get the same results.

Monday, June 5, 2017

Over the next couple weeks, Amanda and I (I being Kelly, in case you didn't know) will be working on posting a few tips and tricks to help make your next Bout of Books absolutely fabulous.

Sounds great, Kelly, you say to yourself, but what does that MEAN?

Well, my darling Bout of Books-ers, it means we're going to touch on a few issues we've seen arise over the course of this read-a-thon. Unfortunately, a few of the issues have led to people being disqualified from winning the grand prize (among other things).

Frankly, that sucks.

So we're here to get the word out.

Are you ready?

The first subject we're going to touch on for our Tips and Tricks feature is what "Actively Participating" means and how you can make sure you're doing what you need to do.

What do we consider an active participant?

Simply put, you have to be properly signed up (aka, have a direct link in our sign-up linky) AND have at least two updates directly linked in our daily link-ups.

That's it.

THAT'S IT.

Sign up and participate on at least two different days. NOT HARD, RIGHT? Yet, invariably, we run into issues with this almost every read-a-thon.

Okay, that's great, but I missed a day on updates!

GUYS, that's fine! We're a seven day read-a-thon. You only have to update two of the seven days to be considered an active participant. TWO. Out of SEVEN.

YOU GOT THIS!

But I'm not interested in doing the challenges, why update?

The daily challenges are completely separate from the updates themselves. You can choose to include your challenge response in your update, but it's not required.

Heck, between hosting Bout of Books and reading, I don't always have the chance to get the challenges done either. But I do update every day. For me, it's a way to track what I accomplished (or didn't accomplish) and plan out what I'm going to do the next day.

Updates don't even have to be all that complex. A simple tweet saying "Today I read XX" or "Today I did XX" is enough. Grab the direct link, toss it in the daily linky and you're GOLDEN!

Remember what I said before? YOU GOT THIS!

Are updates required to participate in Bout of Books?

No. Absolutely not. If you prefer to read, chat, and read some more without the hassle of updating, that's fine. But we have to put down some guidelines to we can administer the giveaway fairly. So there's that little "actively participating" rule.

And, in case you're wondering, yes, we do run into people who sign up and never do anything beyond that. Again, THAT'S FINE if that's the way you choose to do your Bout of Books thing. We want you to be comfortable doing it your way.

But if you want to be eligible for the Bout of Books Grand Prize, you need to sign up properly and update at least twice.